Descartes: A Biography

c CUNYB/Clarke     December, :

 Descartes: A Biography

Descartes wrote to Elizabeth,May,expressing regret that she

had been sick for quite some time and that he had not known about it

sooner because of his ‘solitude’. However, he had heard from Pollot that

the princess was suffering from a fever and a dry cough, and since she

had asked him the previous year for advice about ‘the conservation of

her health’, he felt emboldened enough to inquire about the details of

her sickness.While acknowledging that he is not a physician, Descartes

offers a psychosomatic diagnosis even before he hears directly from the

patient. ‘The most usual cause of a low fever is sadness. The stubbornness

with which fortune persecutes your house provides you continuously with

reasons to be angry. These misfortunes are so public and striking that

it requires little guesswork...to judge that they are the primary cause

of your indisposition’ (iv.). Descartes then appeals to his assump-

tions about mind-body interaction to suggest a remedy, in the course of

which he makes one of the first references to the passions, a topic that

later emerges as central to his philosophy. He suggests that common or

‘lowly’ souls allow themselves to be dominated by their passions, and that

they are happy or sad simply because they have pleasant or unpleasant

experiences. In contrast, those with ‘superior’ souls, who may be sub-

ject to even more violent passions than normal, make sure that reason

remains master of the passions and that natural afflictions contribute

toward ‘the perfect felicity they enjoy even in this life’ (iv.). In a

word,Descartes recommends that Elizabeth use her mind to overcome

the baneful effects of negative emotions and that she rally her mental

strength to combat an illness that results from an underlying mental

state.

Elizabeth replies gratefully with the following description of her indis-

position:

Yo ushould be aware that I have a body that is very much imbued with the weaknesses

of my sex. It feels very easily the disturbances of the soul and is not strong enough

to recover as the soul does because its temperament is subject to obstructions, and I

live in a climate that affects its condition greatly. I also live with people who cannot

take much exercise, so that the heart does not require a long oppression by sadness

before the spleen is obstructed and the rest of the body is affected by its vapours.

I imagine that the low fever and dry cough from which I am still suffering results

from that, although the season’s heat [in May] and the walks I take are renewing

mystrength a little. That is why I have accepted the advice of physicians, to drink

the Spa waters within a month (which they will deliver here...), because I have

found by experience that they clear obstructions. However, I shall not drink it before